quark

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. Any of a group of six elementary particles having electric charges of a magnitude one-third or two-thirds that of the electron, regarded as constituents of all hadrons. See Table at subatomic particle.

n. A soft creamy acid-cured cheese of central Europe made from whole milk.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. In the Standard Model, an elementary subatomic particle which forms matter. Quarks are never found alone in nature and combine to form hadrons, such as protons and neutrons.

n. a soft creamy cheese. The Russian quark and Finnish quark are somewhat different. The Russian version is firmer in consistency and contains about 15% milk fat, whereas the Finnish quark often contains less than 1% milk fat.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

n. fresh unripened cheese of a smooth texture made from pasteurized milk, a starter, and rennet

n. (physics) hypothetical truly fundamental particle in mesons and baryons; there are supposed to be six flavors of quarks (and their antiquarks), which come in pairs; each has an electric charge of +2/3 or -1/3

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

From Three quarks for Muster Mark!, a line in Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.

German, from Middle High German quarc, from Lower Sorbian twarog, from Old Church Slavonic tvarogŭ.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

First used in 1963 by the discoverer of quarks, Murray Gell-Mann, to name these new particles. The literary connection to James Joyce's Finnegans Wake was asserted later (quote below).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

German Quark, from Middle High German quarc

Examples

Seeing the word "quark" in James Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake" induced him to make the spelling change.

A Secret Squirrel cartoon featured an evil, sentient quark as a villain. He was flattening the United States one structure at at time, destroying structures by pulling out the bottom atom. He planned to turn the country into a parking lot, then flatten Canada to make room for a giant amphitheater...where he would perform. The best part was the way he was defeated...Secret pointed out that quarks are defined as hypothetical particles, so he didn't really exist. Thus, he disappeared in a puff of logic.

I'm down with what you're saying Sionnach, that quarks have a certain charm, although that sounds pretty strange. You're usually on top of such things, and cut straight to what's up and getting to the bottom of such things. Hopefully bashing WordNet is just a flavor of the week, since it isn't actually a dictionary.